


This is Our Fight Song

by rochke11



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, F/F, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Post-Divorce, Pre-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:37:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rochke11/pseuds/rochke11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Clexa one-shots.  Everything from canon-verse to AUs.  Requests are always welcome</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I know I already have one WIP, but I really had to start this, the muse was with me. Also I have a list of prompts/requests to work on

They were seventeen and believed they’d live forever. They were seventeen and would sneak out their windows at night. They were seventeen and believed that nothing could ever come between them. They were seventeen and it was the end of the world. The year was 2052 and the world as they knew it was coming to an abrupt end.

Clarke logically knew that the world as she knew it was over, but she refused to admit that anything would change. Living on the army base just outside of Washington D.C. Clarke had a more stable life than the average American. They still had a school in operation on the base, one of the last government operated schools open in the country. They still had access to phones and the internet. They were still alive. California was underwater and Texas has been nuked in to oblivion, but somehow the army base outside of Washington D.C. had yet to be hit. With the world on the brink of collapse it was only a matter of time before the defenses around the Capital were broken and they were nuked into non-existence, but in that moment Clarke was still a teenager.

“Did you hear from Dad today?” she asked her mom as they ate their government provided rations in their largely empty home.

Abby shook her head as she finished chewing, “Not today.” Jake Griffin was a space engineer with NASA, and in the past few weeks he’d been forced to stay at the NASA base several hours away from them. With communication spotty at best, it had been days since they’d last heard from Jake. At that point he’d mentioned something about one last launch in to space, and that he was likely to be on it, but they hadn’t heard anything new.

“Do you think he already launched?” Clarke asked.

  
“No,” Abby shook her head. “We would have heard if he had. It would have been on the radio at the very least as we would have been able to see the launch from here.”

  
“Good,” Clarke nodded.

  
They ate the rest of their meal in silence before Abby headed up to bed. She was one of the few doctors on base and was nearly always on call. As a result, she slept whenever she could. “Please get to bed at a decent hour tonight,” Abby sighed, “I know you’ve been sneaking out to see Lexa and you need to stop doing that. It’s not safe to leave base.”

  
“I haven’t been sneaking out,” Clarke denied.

  
“Don’t lie to me Clarke.”

  
“Why can’t she come live with us?” Clarke pleaded. “You keep saying that it’s not safe out there for me, so how can it possibly be safe for my girlfriend? Her family is all dead. It’s not fair that we get to live safely behind walls in a house that is way too big for our family, while my girlfriend has trouble finding where her next meal is coming from on some days.”

  
“I know it doesn’t sound fair,” Abby touched her daughter’s shoulder, “But there are laws that can’t be broken here. It’s only families of high level NASA and government personnel allowed inside the walls.”

  
“Lexa is my family,” Clarke pushed her mom’s hand off her shoulder as she abruptly stood up and walked away from her. Abby shook her head at her daughter’s tantrum and went up to bed.

  
Clarke waited until her mother had been asleep for over an hour before she pulled on her sneakers and a hoodie, ready to sneak out. She wrapped the half of her rations from the day that she’d saved for Lexa, placed it in her backpack and snuck out the kitchen door. It was only just after nine at night, but already the streets of the base were empty. If Clarke had been paying more attention to the world around her, then she would have realized that President Wallace hadn’t been seen in public in over a month, and that slowly different families had been moving out of the base to an undisclosed location. That very morning, Maya Vie and her family had left for that same undisclosed location, but Clarke was too focused on her own life to worry about anyone else.

  
By the time she reached the fence at the east end of the base, Clarke was itching to see her girlfriend. She quickly moved the shrubbery that discreetly covered a hole in the fence and shimmied through it. She quickly bolted across the expansive field where the military monitored all movement toward the city. She ran through the city until she made it to the dilapidated area where her girlfriend had been moved to after her parents died in the second epidemic of Foreign Virus two years earlier.

 

“Clarke!” exclaimed the brunette as she pushed her way through the slab of sheet metal that was serving as a door to the hovel she shared with other teenagers who had been orphaned in the never-ending war. She wrapped her arms tightly around Clarke, holding her as if she hadn’t seen her in weeks instead of days.  
Clarke returned the sentiment by pressing her lips firmly against Lexa’s, tangling her hands in the girl’s tangled brown curls. “Hello to you too,” she grinned as she finally pulled away and rested their foreheads together.

  
“I love you,” Lexa smirked back.

  
“What’s not to love?” Clarke teased before pecking Lexa’s nose, “I love you too.”

  
“We should get off the street,” the brunette announced as she pulled Clarke in to the hovel she called home. Lately, the biggest threats they were facing weren’t from other countries threatening more warfare, but rather criminals who roamed the streets at night, owning the streets without the threat of police. The police force had been disbanded for months and the military had given up on the slums.

  
Once in Lexa’s home, Clarke withdrew from her backpack the rations she’d been saving for the past few days. When Clarke had first started bringing Lexa her extra rations, Lexa had refused them, not wanting to be a charity case. But when things had gotten worse, she knew that survival was more important than her pride, and she knew that Clarke just wanted to make things more fair.

  
Lexa ate several bites out of a can of tuna before hiding the bag of food under a loose floorboard.

  
“So where are we going tonight?” Clarke asked. Despite the world that seemed to be dying around them, they refused to stop living.

  
“Jasper and Monty are throwing a party down in the tunnels,” Lexa explained as she took the blonde’s hand in her’s. “I was thinking we could hit that up. Unless you want to hang here at Versailles,” she gestured to the room around her, the room with holes in the walls and puddles on the floor.

  
“Let’s go get drunk,” Clarke smiled, squeezing the girl’s hand as she pulled her up on her feet.

  
Lexa led Clarke through the dangerous seats of Washington D.C., knowing exactly how best to get to the underground rave. She was silent and agile from years of living on the streets. She could easily defend herself and Clarke if need be, but she preferred not to have to worry about scuffles in the first place.

  
When they arrived at the tunnels after climb down an old sewage drain, the party was already in full swing. Monty and Jasper and starting raves a few months back once they figured out a way to divert unused power to underground locations. The tunnels were dimly lit, but music was blasting. Clarke found herself starting to dance to the music before she even made it to the dance floor.

  
Looking around her, Clarke took in the crowd. They were all teenagers more or less, she could have sworn she saw a few kids that could barely more than eleven. And nearly everyone was drunk. Clarke knew they were likely all orphans. The world was full of orphans now. The Three killed off many adults as well as the very young and the very old. Teenagers and young adults were naturally stronger and more of them survived The Three.

  
The viruses all hit the United States within a month of each other, decimating the population. They were all manufactured by terrorists and combined had been referred to as The Three. The first had been a waterborne illness, infected many water sources and making nearly all sink water poisonous and the last had infected the very air that was breathed. It was because of the second that Clarke met Lexa. The met at a quarantine center.

  
Both Clarke and Lexa were some of the first to come down with Tech Flu and had immediately attached on to each other in the quarantine center. People were dying all around them them, and when it was finally discovered that the surgically implanted tech devices in their arms had been hacked by terrorists, arm amputations became rampant. The two girls had managed to just barely avoid amputations, instead Abby had found a way to reverse the electric flow in their bloodstreams and remove the devices without amputations. They both had gross looking scars on the inside of their forearms, but it was worth it.

  
Looking around, Clarke noticed that almost every single teen in the room either had a matching scar, or an amputated arm. The Tech Virus was the one of The Three that effected teens the most.

  
Lexa led Clarke to the booze buckets and made a cup each for herself and Clarke. They both downed the glass before grabbing another to walk around with. Clarke noticed Jasper in the DJ booth and Monty off to the side with Miller, but didn’t see any of their other friends. She briefly hoped they were okay, before deciding to live in the moment. She grabbed Lexa and pulled her close until they were dancing chest to chest.

  
Soon the alcohol took hold and their dancing became more provocative and interspersed with raunchy make-out sessions. They were seventeen. They were hormonal teenagers living without a care about tomorrow. They lived in the moment, believing they could never die.

  
It seemed like only minutes passed, when in reality they spent hours in that underground tunnel, getting as close as physically possible while still keeping their clothes on.

  
“I need to get back to the base before my mom realizes I’m gone,” Clarke sighed in to Lexa’s lips as the crowd started thinning out. It was already well past midnight and into the early hours of the morning.

  
“I’ll walk you back,” Lexa insisted, to which Clarke agreed.

  
The walk back to base quickly sobered the girls up as they walked hand in hand. The early rays of sunlight that came with sunrise were just barely visible with the looming storm clouds overhead.

  
“I hate having to leave you,” Clarke sighed, squeezing her girlfriend’s hand. “I wish I could just bring you in to the base. I just want to be able to wake to your silly face every morning, safe and mine forever.” Even when they wanted to leave the real world behind, it was always there, impacting their every interaction.

  
“I am yours forever,” Lexa insisted.

  
“I could leave. Come live with you.”

  
“We’ve been over this,” the brunette shook her head, “It’s silly for us both to have our lives at risk every day. And it’s silly for you to leave your parents.”  
“I know, I know.” she shook her head, “It’s just not fair.”

  
They reached the clearing just before the gates to the base and paused. Clarke didn’t have to worry about sneaking in. She had her ID and would be allowed through the gates. It was much easier to enter in the morning than to leave at night.

  
“I’ll try and get out tomorrow night,” Clarke spoke. She pulled Lexa in to a tight embrace and kissed her desperately. As she pulled away, she noticed the ruckus outside the base gates. Several armored cars were there and she could tell that something wasn’t right.

  
“I’m coming with you to make sure you get in okay,” Lexa spoke matter-of-factly. Clarke nodded and intertwined their hands. They’d just stepped on to the open field when they felt the rain. Within moments they realized it wasn’t ordinary rain. It was acid rain.

  
“Quick!” Clarke began to run, her hand still attached to Lexa’s. “We need to get under cover!” She could feel the acid rain scorching her skin.

  
As they ran, the soldiers turned to look at her. She saw them pounding on the hood on an armored car and pointing to her. Two figures came out of the car and as Clarke and Lexa closed the distance between them and the car, she recognized them. The first was her mom. The second, her dad.

  
“Dad!” she exclaimed, running faster.

  
After they reached the gates, protective rain coats were thrown at them and both she and Lexa through one on.

  
“What’s going on?” the blonde asked after hugging her father.

  
“There’s a shuttle launching from the NASA base,” he explained, “I managed to get you and your mom seats on the shuttle. It may be the last one we’re able to launch until the war ends or we’re totally decimated. It’s safer up on the space station. We have a window to launch, but it’s only a few hours away, we need to leave now.”

  
“Wh-what?” the blonde sputtered. “No, I can’t leave.” She turned to look at her girlfriend who grasped her hand again. “Not without Lexa.”  
Jake looked between Clarke and Lexa with sadness. “There isn’t room for her,” he sighed.

“Then I’m not going,” Clarke took a step back from her father, pressing her body against Lexa’s.

“You don’t have a choice,” Abby took a step forward. “Staying here is a death sentence. I cannot allow you to stay. You’re best chance at survival is that space station.”  “I’d rather die with Lexa than live without her.” Her grip on Lexa tightened.

“Your mom is right,” Lexa spoke softly in to her ear. “You need to survive. I need you to survive.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“We need to leave now,” Jake insisted.

The soldiers approached them and Abby and Jake turned back to the car. Clarke’s eyes pricked, but she refused to shed tears. She brought Lexa in to a tight hug.

“I love you more than anything.”

“I love you more than that,” Lexa responded. They slowly pulled away and Clarke walked backwards to the armored car as the rain continued to fall. As she reached the car, she saw the soldiers asking Lexa for the protective raincoat back. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Why did she get to live when Lexa could be dead by morning?

They were seventeen and believed they’d live forever. They were seventeen and would sneak out their windows at night. They were seventeen and believed that nothing could ever come between them. They were seventeen and it was the end of the world.

She couldn’t do it. Clarke sprinted towards Lexa, leaving her parents behind her. She reached the girl and clutched her tightly. The tears she’d tried to contain were falling freely and one look at her girlfriend made her see the tears mirrored on her face.

“It’s not fair,” Clarke sobbed. She could feel the soldiers coming up behind her and one grabbed her shoulder lightly.

“Clarke, you need to leave, you have to survive,” Lexa sobbed in return. The soldiers were now fully on top of them, pulling them apart.  
Clarke attempted to keep a hold on the brunette, but struggled with the soldiers. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you. I can’t.”

Lexa elbowed a soldier in the face to get him off of her and pulled Clarke towards her. She kissed her with all the energy she had in her, completely ignoring the acid rain that hit her after her hood fell off. She too refused to say goodbye to the girl. “May we meet again then Clarke Griffin,” she smiled.

“May we meet again,” Clarke smiled back through her tears. She let the soldiers tear her away from her love and usher in to the armored car. She kept her eyes on Lexa until they pulled away and she was out of sight. She watched the girl wave to her and give back her protective rain coats.

Hours later, when she sat on the shuttle, buckled in and headed for space, she looked out her window and watched the world disappear beneath her. She counted the hours that had passed since she left Lexa. She counted them even after she reached the space station. She counted them when communication with the United States on Earth nearly disappeared several weeks later. She counted them until she got word that the terrorists had nuked Washington DC. Then she stopped counting.

She stopped counting. She stopped eating. She stopped loving. She stopped talking. And a week after she stopped counting, she stopped breathing.

They were seventeen and believed they’d live forever. They were seventeen and believed that nothing could ever come between them. They were seventeen and it was the end of the world. The year was 2052 and the world as they knew it came to an abrupt end.


	2. Celebrity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Clarke accidentally calls a stranger instead of Octavia, she accidentally calls celebrity and rock star, Alexandria Woods. Only, to her, it's just Lexa, the woman on the other end of the phone, the woman who she ends up staying in contact with and eventually growing to care for kind of a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is ginormous I know.

**Prompt That Nobody Actually Asked For:**   _When Clarke accidentally calls a stranger instead of Octavia, she accidentally calls celebrity and rock star, Alexandria Woods. Only, to her, it's just Lexa, the woman on the other end of the phone, the woman who she ends up staying in contact with and eventually growing to care for kind of a lot._

 

Lexa was sitting on a couch designed more for looks than comfort, tapping her pencil on the blank notebook paper, when her phone started to ring.  Desperate for any kind of distraction from her writer’s block, she answered the phone without even bother to look at the caller ID.  Before she even had a chance to say “Hello,” the speaker on the other end of the call started ranting quickly.

“This is exactly why I told you I needed my phone charger back Octavia!  My phone is dead and I’m stuck at the stupid bar you PROMISED you’d meet me at, alone.  I’m having to use some random stranger’s phone to call you all because you A. stole my charger and B. never showed up to the girls night YOU planned.  I should have just ignored you.  Because I am one hundred percent over Finn and don’t need to go club hopping with you to prove that.  Now where are you?  Don’t make me call Bellamy on you.  You need to come pick me up.”  Lexa couldn’t help, but smile as she listened to the rant.  Clearly the woman had the wrong number and was upset about being stood up by her friend, Lexa found the random intrusion in to her own life somewhat entertaining.  “Are you even listening to me Octavia?” The voice spoke again and Lexa realized she had to address the woman on the other end of the line.

“Sorry, this is not Octavia,” she spoke, “I think you have the wrong number.”

“Shit.  Really?” The woman asked, “Isn’t this 203-555-0445?”

Lexa shook her head, but then realizing the woman couldn’t actually see her, responded, “Not quite.  I think you dialed 0454 instead of 0445.”

“Oh my god.  I’m sorry for totally ranting at you, you should have just hung up.”

“No worries, it’s fine.”  Lexa needed the interruption, she wasn’t getting any writing done and she knew she needed to start work on her new album, but she simply wasn’t getting anywhere.  She had no real inspiration.  “You clearly needed that rant, stranger.”

“Clarke,” the woman spoke.

“Sorry?”

“My name is Clarke.”

“Clarke,” Lexa repeated.  She liked the name.  It was unique, and seemed to work on the husky-voiced girl.  She contemplated what name to give the woman, before settling on the one that only her close friends and family called her, “I’m Lexa.”

“Well Lexa, I apologize again for calling you and interrupting whatever it is you were in the middle of,” Clarke spoke.

Lexa laughed as she responded, “Seriously, don’t worry about it.  I was failing dismally at trying to get some work done and you were a much desired distraction.”

“Wait, work?” the other woman asked, “It’s nearly midnight, why are you…oh.  You’re in a different time zone, aren’t you?”

Lexa looked over at her clock and saw that it was, in fact, nearly midnight.  “Same time zone,” she responded, “I guess I lost track of time.  Everything is always kind of bright and loud in New York, and when you live alone it’s easy to lose track of time, especially at night.”  Lexa wasn’t sure why she was still talking to the stranger, but it was nice.

“So New York City, huh?” Clarke asked.  “I’ve never been, which is weird because being in Washington DC it’s not like I’m far.  I’m kind of jealous that you live alone though.  I’ve lived with my friends Octavia and Raven since our senior year of college, and as you can probably tell, they’re not the most reliable people around.”

Lexa was shocked that Clarke had never been to New York.  She assumed most people had.  But then again, Lexa had been to nearly every big city on the planet, so she wasn’t exactly the best judge.  Even in their short conversation, Lexa already felt less stressed than she was minutes earlier.  “New York is overrated,” she explained, “And so is living alone.  I’d much rather live with friends, and in a less lonely city.”  What she didn’t say, was that she was never really sure who her real friends were.

“The grass is always greener on the other side I guess,” Clarke sighed.

The two sat there in silence for several beats before Lexa spoke, “I guess you should probably call Octavia then.   I don’t want to hold you up.”

“The guy who’s phone I’m borrowing definitely seems to be getting anxious,” Clarke laughed in return.  Lexa liked the sound of the other woman’s laugh, it was earnest.  “Who knew I would have gotten so lucky to have someone actually nice pick up when I called the wrong number?  It was nice talking to you Lexa the Stranger.”

“You too Clarke,” Lexa smiled in to the receiver, “I hope you reach Octavia now.”

“Thanks.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Lexa smiled as she hung up her phone.  Seeing that she still had nothing on the paper in front of her, she decided to head to bed.  She had a radio interview as well as a photo shoot for Rolling Stone the next day and knew she needed her rest, so she walked across her way too big for one person apartment and quickly fell asleep on her California King bed.  
   
When Lexa woke the next morning at 6:00am she scrolled through her emails and texts, they never seemed to stop, but paused when she saw a text that wasn’t from Indra, Anya, Gustus, Quint or Nyko, her entourage.  She’d received the text at just after one in the morning.

 

> **Unknown Number** : Hey there Lexa the Stranger.  Not sure why I’m texting you, but I hope the city that never sleeps isn’t keeping you up and that you finally decided to get some sleep.  Sorry again about ranting at you earlier!  Octavia definitely got an earful from me after she finally arrived.

Even though the text had no signature, she knew it was the woman from the phone call earlier.  On a whim, she decided to save the number and give a response back.

 

> **Lexa the Stranger** : I ended up going to bed just after getting off the phone with you.  I’m glad Octavia finally arrived.

Though she didn’t expect a response from the woman, she was hopeful nonetheless.  She’d enjoyed the brief conversation she’d had with Clarke.  It was a nice break from the conversations she had on a regular basis regarding her upcoming tour, the beginnings of her new album, and how she needed to promote herself more on social media.  Remembering her publicist, Anya’s remarks about maintaining her presence on social media, Lexa decided to post on Instagram before heading off to her radio interview.  She took a quick photo of the view from her window and added the caption:

 

> **@AlexandriaWoods** : Only three more weeks of waking up to this great view and then the tour starts!  Can’t wait! #AWTour

It was the kind of post Lexa knew Anya would approve of.  It hinted at the fact that she was busy and acknowledged her upcoming sold-out world tour while still maintaining her relatability.  The only qualm Anya would have was that she hadn’t included her face in it, but Lexa was not one for posting morning selfies.

It wasn't until that afternoon, while she sat getting her hair and make up done that Lexa received a response from Clarke.  Lexa tried hard not to be one of those Prima Donna celebrities who made things difficult for the people working around her, which is why she always sat still and had them work, but Lexa couldn't resist checking her phone after seeing that the text was from her stranger caller. She apologized to the woman braiding her hair as she quickly leaned forward to grab the phone from the table in front of her.

 

> **Clarke** : All pleasantries aside, why the hell were you up at 6 am on a Saturday?

Lexa chuckled before she typed her own response.

 

> **Lexa the Stranger:** work :(

Lexa imagined that after a night out, that Clarke was just waking up. She briefly wondered how old Clarke was. She sounded young on the phone and still lived with college friends, so she was probably around Lexa's own age.

 

> **Clarke** : no wonder you're able to afford your own apartment in NYC, you must be quite the workaholic.  
>  **Lexa the Stranger** : I have one of those round the clock jobs  
>  **Clarke** : oooh. So I'm going to guess that means finance, journalism or you're a cop of some sort. Or maybe a doctor? Are you a doctor?  
>  **Clarke** : wow. Sorry, I just realized how weird that came off as. A total stranger asking your job and knowing where you live. I swear I'm not a creep, but you totally don't have to answer that.

Lexa chuckled at Clarke's response. She liked the way she talked, or in this instance, texted. She was like a breath of fresh air.  But there was no way Lexa was going to reveal what she did, that would reveal who she really was and she couldn't risk that. Not when she could see herself potentially becoming friends with the stranger, and not after the whole Costia ordeal. Not that this was the same thing at all, but she now knew better than to mix her personal life with her professional one, no matter how many times Anya insisted they were one and the same. Instead, Lexa decided on a vague, though true response to send to Clarke.

 

> **Lexa the Stranger** : well if you're a creep, than so am i. I know you're roommates names, where you live and the fact that you recently broke up with someone named Finn.

She wasn't sure if Finn was male or female, and Lexa certainly wasn't one to make assumptions, so she remained gender neutral.

 

> **Lexa the Stranger** : and no, I'm none of the above. Though close(ish). I work in entertainment, so I basically do everything you think of when you think of journalism.

What she didn't say, was that she was always on the side getting interviewed, not interviewing.

 

> **Clarke** : wow. So you're stalking me now ;)  
>  **Clarke** : that sounds like a whole lot of work. I bet it's cool, do you get to meet celebrities?  
>  **Lexa the Stranger** : it can be, but it's more stressful than anything else. When it's good it's amazing, but most of the time I just travel a lot, talk to people who don't actually care about me as a person, and get very little sleep.

Lexa hit send before she had time to rethink her message. She'd never admitted that before to anyone, not even Anya. When you're an international celebrity with two double platinum albums and a third that is about to hit that, it sounds shallow to claim that people don't care about you. But to Lexa, people cared about Alexandria, the star who was expected to live an extravagant lifestyle of parties and rehab, not Lexa, the young woman who grew up to fast thanks to a stage mom who never stopped. A young woman who wishes her life were simpler.

 

> **Clarke** : I know what you mean about talking to people who don't really care. I work at an art gallery and the people who come by are the rich snobby type, always trying to buy things because they're expensive and not because they actually enjoy art.  
>  Clarke: Rich people suck.

Lexa felt a bit awkward after Clarke’s response, after all it’s not like she was living frugally. She lived in a penthouse apartment that could house several families, and had apartments in other cities such as Los Angeles, London and Paris as well as a house in the Hamptons. And needless to say, her homes were all exquisitely decorated, though not by her, but rather someone she hired.

“Alexandria, it’s time for us to do your make up,” the woman spoke. Lexa nodded and put her phone down so that the make up artist had full access to her face after sending off one last text.

 

> **Lexa the Stranger:** i’ve never met anyone who worked at an art gallery. It must be amazing to be around nice art all day.

The brunette spent the afternoon alternating between different outfits and posing with multiple guitars in different settings with different backdrops, letting herself be manipulated in to positions to get the best shot. And after what felt like hours, she gave her interview and headed home to her empty apartment to continue to try and write new songs for the album that wouldn’t even be released for another year at least.

 

* * *

 

 

> **Clarke** : First kiss?  
>  **Lexa** : Her name was Sarah. I was thirteen, she was sixteen. She was my mom’s colleague’s daughter and we met at a dinner mom hosted. We were both drunk on wine and snuck in to the coat closet. It was messy and awkward, but it was a first kiss so what do you expect?  
>  **Clarke** : Wait, you were drinking at thirteen? When I was thirteen I was still playing with Barbies.  
>  **Lexa** : Yeah.

“Clarke! Are you even listening to me?” Octavia’s voice jolted Clarke out of the trance she’d been in while texting Lexa. It had been two months since Clarke had accidentally dialed her number instead of Octavia’s, and they’d yet to go a day without speaking.

“Are you still texting that stranger girl?” Raven asked, looking up from her magazine.

“Maybe,” Clarke responded with a shrug. She seriously regretted telling her roommates and best friends about Lexa. All they did was tease her about it. “And she’s not really a stranger anymore. We’ve been talking for two months.”

“Texting,” Raven clarified, “You’ve been texting for two months.”

 

> **Clarke** : That came off a lot harsher than intended. I wasn’t judging you, I swear.  
>  **Lexa** : I believe you Clarke. Texting doesn’t exactly convey intent well all the time.

“Clarke, either ask that girl out on a date or stop talking to her, you’re missing out on gossip hour,” Octavia spoke as she gestured to the magazine that Raven was holding.

Clarke sighed and put down her phone for the moment and sat down on the couch with her friends. “Alright, what are we gossiping about?” she asked.

Octavia squealed and grabbed the magazine from Raven, as she was sitting in the middle. She closed the magazine to show Clarke the cover. “We’re talking about Alexandria and how totally badass she is and how it’s not fair that she’s sexy as hell as well as a talented singer, songwriter and guitar player.”

Clarke looked down at the magazine, and even she had to admit that the star on the cover of Rolling Stone was sexy. The brunette’s hair was done up in braids that only a rock star could pull off. She wore leather pants and a wife beater with a leather jacket thrown over one shoulder while she balanced a Fender with her other hand. She wore laced up black heeled boots that elongated her already mile-long toned legs.

“I bet this is crazy photoshopped,” Clarke spoke, hampering the mood in the room. “I doubt she’s that toned and perfect looking in real life.”

“Ugh, you’re such a hater,” Raven rolled her eyes.

“And even if she was, I bet she’s like crazy full of herself. One of those divas that asks for only green M&Ms or ginger ale with the bubbles stirred out of it in her dressing room,” Clarke continued. “You can’t be that famous and not have it all go to your head.”

“Ahem,” Octavia cleared her throat while she flipped the pages of the magazine and read from the article on Alexandria. “Sitting down to talk to Alexandria Woods is like talking to a well-seasoned professional. She is courteous and well-spoken and comes across as very serious about her music.”

“So she’s a soulless robot then,” Clarke interrupted.

Octavia pressed a hand to the blonde’s face as she continued to read from the article. “When asked about her upcoming tour, Alexandria admitted, ‘I love traveling, which is why it’s so exciting to go on tour again. It’s been two years since my last tour, and this one is even bigger than the last. It’s 85 shows, and ten different countries so I really will be going all over the world for it. Even though the tour dates are all very close together, I try and take at least a day in every country or area of the country to explore a bit. It’s one thing to put on a show, but I also enjoy traveling for the sake of traveling.”

“So she’s using her tour to get free tourism?”

“Seriously Clarke, shut up.”

“During our conversation, Alexandria also spent a lot of time talking about her two opening acts, The Grounders and Ace. The Grounders is a group of four girls who’ve been friends since middle school and Fox is an up and coming female artist known for her hit-single Kick It Back Slowly. She was very enthusiastic about both acts, saying, ‘The Grounders and Fox are all amazing girls. As we’ve been prepping for the tour I’ve gotten to know them a lot better and honestly I’m so glad that I’ll be on tour with them. We have a group chat going on and Harper from The Grounders is keeping us up to date with a countdown to the kick-off show and Monroe sends us daily reminders of the fact that she loves prank wars. I think that those girls are a big part of why the AW tour is going to be so great. These girls are amazing and talented and I can’t wait to show the world why they are so great.”

“She’s big on the whole girl power thing,” Raven added as a side comment.

“After I reminded Alexandria about how popular Costia came after she opened for her on her last tour, however, she became tight lipped. ‘I am glad that Costia’s talent as been well received.’ When I brought up her former relationship with Costia, Alexandria became even more reticent to speak. ‘As I said before, Costia deserves the success she’s found, as she is incredibly talented, but I do not see how our former relationship has anything to do with my upcoming tour.’”

“Wow,” Clarke interrupted, yet again, “Talk about a drama queen.”

“Seriously?” Octavia snapped the magazine shut and glared at Clarke, “Stop being such a brat. Go talk to your girlfriend and leave us alone to enjoy our gossiping.”

Clarke glared back and grabbed her phone off the table as she left the living room. She entered her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She wasn’t mad at Raven and Clarke, but she had no interest in talking about some singer who yeah, was hella attractive and talented, but that she had no interest in personally.

Putting the interaction with Raven and Octavia behind her, Clarke unlocked her phone and returned to her conversation with Lexa. Clarke had yet to respond to Lexa’s message about how texting didn’t convey emotions well. Clarke took a deep breath and clicked on Lexa’s contact information. She held the phone to her ear and listened to it ring.

Lexa picked up after the second ring, “Hello?”

“I was eighteen and it was my first night of college. I didn’t really drink in high school, so I got drunk pretty quickly that night. We met at a pre-game on our hall and by the time we reached the gross frat house basement we were practically on top of her. I can still remember what song we made out to, it was one of Alexandria’s first hits, Hit That. Even though we lived on the same hall, I think we only talked maybe twice after that. I didn’t even tell her she was my first kiss, her name was Nora.” Clarke delved right in to the story without preamble.

“Hello to you too,” Lexa chuckled and Clarke’s stomach flipped at the sound. She’d forgotten what Lexa had sounded like, as they’d only actually heard each others’ voices that first night. “So is it bad that the biggest thing I got out of that story is the fact that you’re not as straight as I assumed you were?”

Clarke couldn't help but grin in to the phone. They hadn’t spoken much about relationships, but Clarke had told Lexa about how her ex-boyfriend Finn had cheated on her, and while Lexa hadn’t explicitly told Clarke, she got the feeling that the other woman had been cheated on as well.

“That’s not a problem, is it?” Clarke asked, the grin quickly falling on her face as she realized it might be. She knew that she had no room in her life for homophobia, but she really didn’t want to give up whatever it was she had with Lexa.

“No, definitely not,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “That would be very hypocritical of me if it was a problem.”

“Wait, you’re gay?” Clarke’s asked in shock. She wasn’t sure why, but she had just assumed that the girl on the other side of phone was straight.

“Yes I am Clarke. Is that really so surprising?”

“I guess not, but I hadn’t really thought about it,” Clarke responded. That wasn’t entirely true though, there had been several occasions in which Lexa had said something that had caused Clarke to secretly wish that Lexa wasn’t straight. “Well, not much anyway.”

“So you did think about it then?”

“Well when you talk to someone almost constantly for two months, you grow attached, and maybe have a few hopes,” Clarke admitted.

“So why is it that we haven’t actually spoken on the phone since that first night?” Lexa responded. “Though your voice sounds exactly the same. I’ve been imagining your voice with every text you send, and I’m glad it hasn’t changed.”

“What do you look like?” Clarke sputtered, the words leaving like word vomit. “I’d love to have a face to put to all your wit and charm.”

“Are you flirting with me Clarke Griffin?” Lexa asked in a mock-serious tone. Clarke smiled as she realized that Lexa remembered the off-hand remark she’d made several weeks earlier about identifying as a Gryffindor despite the irony of her last name.

“I am definitely flirting with you Lexa.”

“Hold on.”

Clarke waited on the silence and after her phone buzzed, she saw that she had a text from Lexa. It was a photo message. Clarke opened it and saw that it was a picture of someone who must have been Lexa, sticking her tongue out at her. It was fairly close up, cut off just at her eyebrows and chin, but Clarke could see a curl of brown hair around the girl’s ear. Her green eyes were stunning. There was something about her that seemed familiar, but Clarke didn’t dwell on it. She quickly took her hair out of the messy ponytail it was in and sent back a picture of herself sticking her tongue out.

“That’s a really attractive picture of you,” Clarke laughed in to the phone.

“I totally guessed you’d be blonde,” Lexa spoke in return.

“Really?”

“What can I say? I’m a sucker for blondes.”

“You’re such a dork,” Clarke laughed.

“Says the art history nerd.”

“Whatever, loser.”

Clarke and Lexa’s conversations quickly shifted from texting to phone calls. Clarke had offered to also start Skyping, but Lexa claimed that she was traveling a lot for work and that she didn’t really have great internet access. Lexa made sure, however, let Clarke know that she did want to see her face to face.

It was three months since they first spoke when Clarke dialed Lexa’s number while out drunk with Raven and Octavia. It was past two in the morning and she figured that the call would just go to voicemail and leave a message, and was surprised when a very much awake Lexa answered.

“Clarke?” she answered, “What time is it there?”

“It’s two thurty,” Clarke slurred, “What time is it fer you? Where are you Lexaaa?”

“Clarkey is drunky poo, isn’t she?” Lexa laughed. “I’m in London so it’s already morning here.”

“Did you juss call me Clarkey?” Clarke giggled.

“Yes I did. You’re cute when you’re drunk.”

“You can’t even see me.”

“You’re voice is cute,” Lexa laughed, “Are you having fun?”

“Not as much fun without you. You come here pwease?” Clarke pouted, “Some girl kept hitting on me tonight, Lexi.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Noooo,” Clarke drew out the syllable, “Because it wasn’t you.” She paused before speaking in third person, “Clarke is drunk. Clarke should not have said that. Clarke is going to hang up now.”

“Wait!” Lexa exclaimed, “I wish I was there too. And actually that was something I wanted to talk to you about, but I think it should wait until you’re sober. I’ll call you tomorrow. And Clarke? Make sure you drink a lot of water before you go to bed.”

“Why are you so perfect?”

Lexa laughed in to the receiver as she ended the conversation, “Go get some sleep Clarke.” Clarke nodded and hung up the phone, not realizing that Lexa couldn’t actually see her.

The next evening, after finally getting rid of her hangover, Clarke was working on a painting while Raven was watching TV from the couch on the other side of the room. When Lexa called her, she put the call on speaker so that she didn’t get it covered in paint.

“Hey babe,” she answered, too involved in what she was painting to realize the pet name she’d just used.

“You sound better than I would have expected after last night,” Lexa laughed. “Rid of the hangover already?”

“I am,” Clarke grinned, “I had someone reminding me to drink water before bed so my hangover wasn’t too terrible this morning.”

“Good, I’m glad. Do you remember what we talked about when you called me?” Lexa asked.

Clarke blushed to herself when she remembered the conversation. “I remember making a slight fool of myself, but I also remember you calling me Clarkey, so I’d say we’re even.”

“I guess we are,” Lexa relented, “Do you remember what I said about wanting to see you in person?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Clarke saw Raven sit abruptly up on the couch and look at her, listening in intently on the conversation. Clarke nearly took the phone off speaker, but Raven gestured for her not too.

“I do remember that,” Clarke nodded.

“Well, I’m going to be in DC next weekend for work, and I was wondering if maybe you’d want to go on a real date?” Clarke could hear the hesitation in Lexa’s voice.

“Yes,” she responded quickly and enthusiastically, causing Raven to fist bump the air and give herself a self-five. “Yes, definitely, Yes.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” the woman on the other end of line laughed. “So I was thinking, I can get tickets through work. How do you feel about an Alexandria concert?”

Before Clarke even had a chance to really register the question, Raven had hopped off the couch and run over to the phone. She was surprisingly fast despite her leg brace.

“Lexa, hey, it’s Raven. I’m sure Clarke has told you about me. Well Clarke doesn’t particularly care much about Alexandria, but I on the other hand, love her. And I would definitely go on a date with you if it meant seeing Alexandria. She’s on my list.”

“Your list?” Lexa asked.

“List of celebrities I’d have sex with, without question.”

“Please ignore my obnoxious roommate,” Clarke interrupted, “I’d love to go to a concert with you. Don’t listen to Raven.”

“I mean, if you don’t want to. If you don’t like her, then we can do something else.” Clarke could hear the uncertainty in the woman’s voice.

“I do, I do want to,” Clarke insisted.

“You can tell Raven that I can get tickets for her and Octavia as well.”

Raven squealed in a very un-Raven-like manner and Clarke took that as her queue to take the phone call in to her bedroom and left Raven behind.

The next weekend, Clarke found herself dressed up with Raven and Octavia, making their way to Nationals Park were the concert was being held. Lexa had explained that she’d left the tickets at will-call, as she had something to do for work before she met up with Clarke.

“Holy crap,” Octavia spoke, staring in awe at the tickets they’d just picked up at will-call, “Lexa not only got us pit tickets, but also backstage passes? This is some sick ass job she’s got.”

Clarke craned her head to look at the tickets. Even she was impressed. She was also growing nervous though. After listening to all of Alexandria’s songs multiple times, Clarke had finally admitted to the fact that she actually did like the singer and was excited about the concert, but more than that she was both excited and nervous to meet Lexa in person for the first time.

 

> **Lexa** : Can’t wait to see you!

The text came as soon as Clarke, Octavia and Raven pushed their way to the front of the pit, making Clarke feel a lot better about the situation. Her confidence wavered, however, after The Grounders finished their set and Fox came on stage.

“Alexandria just posted an Instagram!” Octavia exclaimed, showing her friends her phone. It was a photo of the woman excitedly pointing to a door that read, ‘Stage Door.’ The caption on the photo read:

 

> **@AlexandriaWoods** : Listening backstage as Fox starts her set! So excited for tonight’s show!! #AWTour #NervousButExcited

“Wow, she must actually be excited,” Raven nodded, “She hardly ever posts anything like that on Instagram.”

Clarke only briefly looked at the photo and caption before sending a nervous text off to Lexa.

Clarke: U almost here? Alexandria is coming on soon! You aren’t standing me up, are you? ;)

She added the winky face at the end of the message to show that she didn’t think Lexa would actually stand her up, but she was nervous nevertheless.

“She’ll be here, don’t worry,” Octavia reassured her. But her reassurances were short lived as Alexandria came on stage. Everyone in the sold-out stadium went wild. The singer greeted her audience and immediately started in on her set.

Clarke found it hard to concentrate on the concert in front of her, constantly checking her phone to see if Lexa had responded. She hadn’t. Finally, Raven convinced her that something major must have happened at work or that her phone had died and she was having trouble finding them in the pit in front of the stage. Clarke knew that Raven was probably right and tried to enjoy the concert.

With the concert coming to a close and no news from Lexa, Clarke decided to let herself enjoy the last few songs the singer performed. She knew the concert was coming to a close and figured she might as well enjoy the incredible tickets she had.

Clarke found herself staring up at the singer, wondering why she looked vaguely familiar, and not through her celebrity status. The lights dimmed on the stage and a stage-crew member handed Alexandria an acoustic guitar and set up a chair near the edge of the stage. The singer took a seat and set up her mic stand so that she could talk to the audience.

“Tonight has been incredible DC,” she spoke, earning cheers from the audience. “Tonight is a special show for me, because I have some one I care about in the audience tonight.” This also earned cheers, though many of them were of surprise.

“Did you know she was dating anyone?” Raven turned to ask Octavia, “I feel like we would have heard. Right? I mean, she’s like one of the biggest celebrities there is.”

“And in honor of her being here, and for you all being such an amazing crowd, I thought I’d surprise you all with a new song.” At the point the crowd went so wild, that even Alexandria’s large green eyes grew wide in surprise. It took several minutes for everyone to calm down. “It’s a song I’m hoping will be on my next album, but nobody other than my cat has actually heard me perform it. In fact, my manager tried to convince me not to play this tonight.” Everyone laughed.

Clarke was standing only feet away from Alexandria, and the more the singer spoke, the faster Clarke’s heart started to beat. All the evidence was right in front of her, but she refused to acknowledge the truth.

“Anyway, the name of this song is When a Stranger Calls. I hope you like it.”

Alexandria’s final line of introduction sealed it for Clarke. She couldn’t deny the truth any longer. “Holy crap,” she spoke, just loud enough for Raven and Octavia to hear.

“What?” they both asked simultaneously.

Alexandria strummed on the acoustic guitar and her voice as she sang the song was sweeter and more sincere than in any of the other songs she’d played so far. “It was a Friday night when it all began. It all began that Friday night. We were two hundred fifty miles away and strangers on the phone.”

“Oh my god,” Clarke continued to gawk in awe.

Raven lightly punched Clarke on the shoulder, “Shut up, I’m trying to listen to her new song. I wanna see if I can figure out who it’s about.”

“The thing about strangers is that with a whisper in your ear, you’re not really a stranger at all,” she continued to sing.

Octavia observed how Alexandria wasn’t looking down at her guitar, or even out at the audience in general, but was rather searching the immediate audience in front of her, obviously looking for someone. She did a good job multi-tasking it seemed though, as the song continued to play from her mouth and her fingers.

Like Octavia, Clarke too was watching Alexandria’s eyes, recognizing them in full. And as the singer sang the words, “I can’t stand to be a stranger to you anymore,” she finally found Clarke. The woman faltered slightly on the chord she was playing as soon as her eyes locked on Clarke’s, but she quickly found her place again.

“Oh my god,” Octavia repeated Clarke’s sentiment from earlier.

“Can you two please stop? Alexandria is staring at me and I need to savor the moment,” Raven spoke.

“Raven, she’s not looking at you. She’s looking at Clarke,” Octavia tried to explain.

“What?” Raven asked.

“She’s looking at Clarke. The song is about Clarke.”

“What do you m-,” Raven started to speak until she finally processed the words that were being sung. “Holy crap. Lexa is Alexandria.”

“Two hundred fifty miles away, you were never a real stranger to me,” Alexandria sang the last sentence of her new song. The crowd went wild, but the woman on stage had only eyes for the blonde in front of her.

Her manager must have said something in her ear piece, as she was quickly startled and stood up and thanked the crowd before her back up dancers returned to stage and she preformed a more peppy number for her final song.

As soon as the final note rang out, Octavia and Raven each grabbed one of Clarke’s hands and began pulling her towards the backstage entrance, following directions from security who saw the backstage passes they were wearing. Octavia was quick to realize that they were not normal backstage passes for a meet and greet with the singer. They were full access passes.

“That’s Anya,” Raven pointed to a woman with a clipboard, “She’s Alexandria’s manager, she can tell us where to go.”

“I was wondering when you three would show up,” Anya smirked. “Lexa is in her dressing room. She told me to tell whichever one of you is Clarke to come in.”

Octavia gave Clarke a kiss on the cheek and pushed her in the direction Anya was pointing. A big sign on the door read ‘Alexandria’. Seeing how surprises were kind of the theme of the day, Clarke opted against knocking, instead she pushed the door open.

As soon as she walked in to the dressing room, she was faced with a brunette who was ringing her hands and had immediately stopped walking around in circles as soon as the door was opened. Clarke could tell how nervous the other woman was. And surprisingly, Clarke wasn’t nervous at all. She figured she should have been, after all she was meeting one of the biggest celebrities and most popular and successful singer’s in the world, but to her, it was just Lexa. The girl who called her ‘Clarkey,’ the girl who had her first kiss in a coat closet and the girl who shared with Clarke a loss of her father, someone she missed on a daily basis.

“Clarke?” Lexa spoke hesitantly, looking up at the blonde with caution.

Clarke didn’t respond with words. Instead, she closed the distance between herself and the brunette and firmly placed her lips on hers. Lexa was clearly taken by surprise, but once she realized what was happening, she quickly wrapped her arms around Clarke and gave in to the kiss.

When they finally pulled away, they kept their arms wrapped around each other, foreheads resting against each other. “So you’re kind of a hot shot singer.” Clarke finally addressed the elephant in the room.

“And you’re way sexier in person than I imagined, and trust me, I didn’t think that was possible.”

“I’m kind of glad you didn’t tell me,” Clarke admitted.

“Really?” Lexa asked, obviously this must have been her biggest concern.

“I liked getting to know you without the influence of gossip and tabloid rumors.”

“That’s all anyone’s going to be talking about tomorrow though. That I have some secret girlfriend I wrote a song for,” Lexa explained.

“So I’m your secret girlfriend, huh?”

“Oh, I mean, it’s just…” Lexa fumbled over her words.

“If that’s you asking me to be your girlfriend Alexandria, then the answer is yes.”

“Actually no,” Lexa began, before quickly explaining so as not to get Clarke upset, “It’s not Alexandria asking. It’s me asking. It’s me, Lexa, asking you, Clarke to be my girlfriend.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought! I really appreciate all comments, and feel free to send in prompts here or on tumblr!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	3. Celebrity Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celebrity part II, a continuation of rockstar!Lexa and nobody!Clarke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! if you follow me on tumblr you know that I was away for the weekend which is why I wasn't able to post anything, but I got back today and wrote this for you all! There will also be a part III (which will be the final part of this series) at some point this week!
> 
> I also promise to post the next chapter of we all have baggage tomorrow.

Clarke doesn’t pay any attention to the notifications right away. At first, they only trickle in a few a week. Maybe two new Instagram followers and one new Twitter follower one week and three the next. She’d always kept both social media accounts on public, so sometimes she didn’t even notice when she gained new followers. She had a tendency to over do it was hashtags as it was, so she figured that that was the reason people were starting to follow her. The idea that people were learning that famous pop/rock star Alexandria was dating a Clarke Griffin who worked in an art gallery in Washington DC, didn’t even cross Clarke’s mind. Of course, now that she knew her girlfriend was a celebrity, she did keep more of an eye out when she was mentioned in the media, but so far no major outlets had discovered who the woman’s secret girlfriend was, but not for lack of trying.

Neither Clarke nor Lexa had really thought about the implications of Lexa revealing that she was secretly dating someone through song at her concert until paparazzi following Alexandria tripled and every interview she gave included a question regarding her relationship status. The press knew that Alexandria had always been quiet on her personal life, and that even when she was dating Costia, Costia was the one feeding information to the press, but they pressured her nevertheless. Lexa never gave in though. She knew that what she had with Clarke was special, and that it wouldn’t be fair to introduce Clarke to the worst part of stardom, the press, after they’d only been dating for such a short while.

It had been six months since the concert and their first official meeting, nine since Clarke had accidentally dialed the star’s number. After the first concert, Lexa had discreetly flown Clarke out to two more of her other concerts, one in Berlin and one in Los Angeles and once her tour had finally ended, Clarke had spent a week in New York with her girlfriend. They’d rarely left Lexa’s apartment during that time, but they were both perfectly okay with that.

It had been two months since the week they spent together in New York, the longest Clarke had been away from Lexa since they became official. They still managed to either talk on the phone or Skype every day, but the distance was starting to become a problem for Clarke. She knew that Lexa was crazy busy starting to record her new album, but that didn’t stop her from wishing the brunette was with her and with each day the distance grew harder to handle. So Clarke was almost perpetually in a bad mood.

She was in a meeting with a potential donor at the gallery when her phone starting dinging and vibrating like crazy. She tried to turn it on silent, but the phone kept lighting up with each notification. She didn’t bother to go through them, as she was in a meeting, but did see that most of the notifications were from Twitter and Instagram, as well as texts from Raven and Octavia. She assumed they were going at each other in a social media war and decided to tag Clarke in it as well, they did that often. Pissed at them for interrupting her meeting, she turned her phone off completely and continued with her day at work.

After a day of dealing with stuck up art mongers, Clarke was in an even worse mood than she’d been at the beginning of the day, so when she arrived home, her anger got the best of her and she slammed the door after entering the apartment. As she walked through the living room, Octavia and Raven both stood up from the couch abruptly. They both immediately started trying to talk to Clarke, but the blonde simply help up her hand.

“I’m really not in the mood to get in to whatever you two are arguing about. You already forced me to have to turn off my phone while I was in with a client today. You want me to decide who’s right? Okay. Flip a coin. If it’s heads, Octavia, you’re in the right. Tails, it’s Raven. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to shower before I Skype with my girlfriend.”

The blonde continued to walk toward her bedroom when Raven spoke loudly, “Clarke stop! This is important.”

Frustrated, the blonde turned around and crossed her arms across her chest, “What.” She spoke tersely.

Raven opened and closed her mouth several times, no words coming out. She looked to Octavia for help and Octavia spoke in a nearly unintelligible form of speech, “SomehowthepressfoundoutaboutyouandLexaandnowtherearepicturesofyoueverywherenadwehavenoideahowbutIthinkitwasFinn.”

“Excuse me?” Clarke asked, having no idea what it was that Octavia had said.

“Everyone knows that you’re Alexandria’s secret girlfriend,” Raven interjected.

“Wh-what?” Clarke stuttered. That certainly wasn’t what the information she’d expected her roommates to ambush her with. She rummaged through her purse before finally withdrawing her phone. She turned it on to find it ambushed with notifications. She already had thousands of news Instagram and Twitter followers and texts from not only her close friends, but also from those she wasn’t particularly close with, asking if the news was true. The only person who had bothered to leave her a voicemail, however, was Lexa. She quickly clicked on it and listened.

The voice on the other end of the line was soft, she sounded nervous. More nervous than Clarke had ever heard her sound before. “Hi Clarke, it’s me. I know you’re at work, and I hope that’s why you haven’t answered any of my calls or texts. I called Octavia and Raven too, and they said you weren’t responding to them either. I…I’m not sure if you saw, but someone sold pictures of us to the press. They’re pictures of us from New York. Private pictures. They’re not bad, but they’re our private pictures and I don’t know how they got them, but now everyone knows who you are and Anya is trying to stop it, but it’s already spread everywhere. Clarke, baby, please call me back. I know we both knew this would happen eventually, but wanted it to be on our terms and it didn’t, but please call me. I need to know you’re okay. And I know you’re at work and not ignoring me, but please call me. I…”

The voicemail got cut off at the end of Lexa’s sentence, and Clarke wish she could have heard the end of it. She wished she could have heard Lexa say the words ‘I love you’. They’d first said those words during their week in New York. Sure, they’d already been dating for four months at the time, but both had wanted to say it in person, and were willing to wait for that, even if they’d felt it for longer.

Ignoring whatever Octavia and Raven were saying to her, Clarke clicked the name at the top of her favorites list and listened as it rang and rang until it went to voicemail. The blonde didn’t bother to leave a message, opting rather to place a call to the singer’s manager instead. Unlike her girlfriend, Anya picked up on the first ring.

“Clarke? Oh thank god. Have you seen the news? Have you spoken to Lexa?” Anya spoke, barely taking a breath between sentences.

“I haven’t seen the pictures or anything, but I know about it. I just tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up.

“Goddamnit Lexa,” Anya muttered. Clarke could hear the singer’s manager typing furiously on a computer. “I told her this was a bad idea. Of course she didn’t tell you. I just forwarded you her flight info.

“Her what?”

 

* * *

 

Lexa was in a meeting with her record label, discussing a possible release date for her new album, when the news broke. They were in the middle of their conversation when Anya glanced down at her phone.

“Shit,” she muttered as she quickly called the number that had texted her the message ‘SOS’. It was the code they used for when important stories were breaking.

Gustus, Alexandria’s bodyguard, had been sitting outside the meeting room, trolling through the news on his phone when the information broke. He sent the text from Anya who then let him in the room. The room immediately changed from one of organizing album information, to a crisis center. Lexa knew that Anya was in crisis mode, despite the fact that other celebrities had much worse stories to worry about. The fact that she was dating a so-called nobody really wouldn’t have garnered the same kind of crisis-aversion techniques if it hadn’t been for the fact that Alexandria was incredibly high profile and incredibly quiet when it came to her personal life. She knew that the press would eat up anything to do with her personal life, especially after everything with Costia had blown up so badly.

“What pictures are they?” Was the first thing Lexa asked after Gustus came in with an iPad, showing the articles.

“They’re in your New York apartment from what I can tell,” Gustus explained, presenting the iPad to the star.

Everyone else in the room pulled up the news on their phones while Lexa scrolled through the photos. Gustus was right, they were all photos of the week Clarke had spent in New York, two months earlier. They were all selfies, with the exception of one photo that Anya had taken of Lexa and Clarke. They’d spent almost the entire week week in Lexa’s apartment, happy to enjoy take-out, Netflix and each other. As a result, the photos were all either selfies of them cuddling, kissing and the handful of pictures with only one of them, but making funny faces at the other. Lexa knew that they had been careful with the pictures though. They had taken them all on Lexa’s phone and sent them to only to Clarke’s phone and their closest friends. She knew none of their friends would spill the secret, so she had no idea how the media had gotten their hands on the photos.

After viewing the photos, Lexa immediately picked up her phone and called Clarke. The call went straight to voicemail, causing her to originally assume the worst, that Clarke was blaming her for the reveal, but after realizing that Clarke was probably still at work, she quickly got over the fear. She then dialed Raven’s number, knowing that she was slightly more reliable than Octavia.

“Lexa! Hi! I’m assuming you’re calling about the news?”

“Yes, Raven. Have you spoken to Clarke?”

“Octavia and I have been trying all morning, but she must have her phone off.”

“Shit, okay,” Lexa paused, trying to think of the best way to handle the situation. “I guess keep trying to contact her. I don’t want her to find out about this from anyone else other than myself, you or Octavia.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Whatever Clarke needs me to do.”

By the time Lexa had gotten off the phone with Raven, Anya and her label had already drafted a statement to be sent to the press along with several drafts of tweets she could send. Lexa briefly looked over the statement and okayed it. It was something about respecting privacy as well as affirming the validity of the photos. They didn’t want it to seem like Alexandria was hiding her relationship, but rather that she was a private person. Lexa didn’t bother to read the drafted tweets, however, instead opting to craft her own.

> **@AlexandriaWoods** : I’m not sure how those private photos were obtained, but I would appreciate if you would all respect my privacy.  
>  **@AlexandriaWoods** : I am not hiding my relationship with Clarke, but refer to keep my private life exactly that, private.

She immediately started receiving responses ranging from those agreeing with her and promising not to spread the photos, to others claiming that because she was a public figure, this was the life she signed up for. Lexa ignored the responses like she always did and turned to Anya who had just finished sending the statement to all the major media outlets, outlets who were already calling her asking for Lexa’s statement.

“I need to go to DC,” Lexa stated simply.

“What?” Anya asked.

“I need to get on the next flight to DC, I need to see Clarke.”

“Don’t you think you’re being dramatic Lexa?” Anya sighed, “I’m sure Clarke is fine. People know that she works in an art gallery somewhere in DC and what her social media handles are. I think she’ll be fine. Talk to her on the phone, but I don’t think this warrants you leaving the city.”

“Of course it does,” Lexa deadpanned, “Having the media talk about me, both good and bad, is nothing new to me, but for Clarke it is, and I need to be there for her.”

“Fine,” Anya responded tersely.

It turned out that Anya was easily able to get a seat each for Lexa and Gustus on a flight in less than two hours, and they made it on to the flight, seated in first class, just moments before the doors closed. She checked her phone every minute after she left a voicemail for Clarke and had Raven and Octavia both promise to text her as soon as they heard from the blonde.

After landing, Lexa turned her phone back on, but saw only a single missed call from Clarke. She did, however, have a text from Raven that read;

Raven: Clarke knows. She came home and we told her. Hard to read her reaction.

The fact that Clarke knew about the situation, but hadn’t bothered to leave her a voicemail or a text bothered Lexa. It didn’t sit right with her and it didn’t seem like something Clarke would do. The crux of their relationship was communication, it was how they had started after all, so the fact that they were experiencing miscommunication troubled her greatly.

The brunette kept her baseball cap low over her face and her head down as she followed Gustus through the DC airport. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the occasional person giving her a double glance, or pointing her out, but with the speed she was walking through the airport, no one actually stopped her.

After going down the stairs towards the exit to the airport, Gustus stopped short. Because Lexa was keeping her head down though, she didn’t see him stop and rammed right in to him.

“What are you stopping for?” Lexa asked. When Gustus didn’t respond, the brunette took it on herself to look around her body guard.

Seeing what she did on the other side of him, Lexa dropped the bag she was holding, her mouth open in awe. Standing there, with Raven and Octavia on either side of her, was Clarke. It wasn’t just Clarke though, it was Clarke holding a massive sign that read,

‘Picking Up: One Incredibly Awesome and Sexy Girlfriend by the Name of Lexa’

Forgetting about the bag she’d dropped, Lexa laughed and hurried over to her girlfriend. “Anya told you I was coming?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Clarke nodded, a matching smile on her face.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw people stalling in their actions, trying to figure out if the woman in the baseball cap was Alexandria or she just looked a lot like her. “People are starting to look at us,” she stated, “People know now, about us.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want this to happen this way.”

“I know,” Clarke nodded, “But it’s kind of romantic, don’t you think? I mean you flew here from New York just to see if I was okay.”

“Are you okay?” Lexa asked.

Clarke nodded and took a step closer to Lexa, so that they were only inches apart. The blonde reached up and took the hat off of Lexa’s head, letting the girl’s brunette curls fall loose so that there was no question that the woman was, in fact, Alexandria. “I told you six months ago, when I found out who you really were that I was in, all in. And I am.”

Lexa took it upon herself to close the last few inches between herself and Clarke, wrapping her arms around the other girl before capturing her lips with her own. She could see flashes from cellphones through her closed eyelids and she knew the photos would be swimming around the internet in only minutes, but Lexa didn’t care. She didn’t care because she knew Clarke didn’t care.

After pulling away from Clarke, she glanced over at Clarke’s friends and saw that Octavia had snapped a picture of them.

“Can you send that to me, O?” she asked. Clearly excited that Lexa had called her by her nickname, Octavia nodded enthusiastically and sent it right away. Originally, Lexa had been very hesitant to give Raven and Octavia her phone number, but now she was glad she had.

Lexa heard her phone ding and she pulled up the photo of her kissing Clarke, with Clarke’s sign clearly visible. She quickly opened the photo in Instagram, tagged Clarke in it, and typed the caption in, gaining Clarke’s approval on it before hitting post.

> **@AlexandriaWoods** : Went to go surprise my girlfriend, only to have her surprise me at the airport by picking me up. I’m so lucky to have her in my life and can’t believe how lucky I am to have her. #Blessed

Lexa could tell that several of their onlookers were itching to talk to the celebrity, and she knew that if she didn’t talk to them, that she would get a stern talking to from Anya about being polite to fans. But first, she needed to check in with Clarke.

“So you’re really okay with this?” the brunette asked.

“Definitely, although I should be asking you the same, because it’s sort of my fault the pictures got published,” Clarke responded.

“What do you mean?”

Clarke took a deep breath before explaining, “Well it turns out that I sent the pictures to an old group message. I thought everyone in it were my close friends, but it turned out it was one that included Finn.” Lexa knew all about Clarke’s cheating ex-boyfriend. “Anyway, I guess he wasn’t too happy that I was dating you, but he sat on the pictures for two months, until yesterday when his new girlfriend broke up with him. It was kind of his breaking point. The Blakes have already called him threatening him, though I’m pretty sure Octavia was more intimidating.”

Lexa glanced over at Octavia who just smirked with a shrug.

“I guess this means I can take you out on a real date now though,” Lexa offered, “Instead of just take out and Netflix.”

“Or maybe,” Clarke trailed off, “Maybe I can take you out. This is my city after all.”

Lexa grinned widely, “I think I’d like that.” She sealed the deal with a kiss before interlocking their fingers, letting Clarke follow her as she went to go talk to the fans that were eagerly awaiting her instead of their baggage as they stood outside the baggage claim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think either below or on tumblr! I really do appreciate your comments! Clearly, as it is because of the comments that I've expanded this one-shot from a one-shot to a three-shot!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	4. Coconut Icing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa have been divorced for seven years and they're forced to see each other for the first time in three years at a wedding, with all three of their children in attendance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were hoping for this to be part 3 of the celebrity three-shot, I have both good and bad news. Bad news: it's not, and I'm not sure there will be a part 3. Good news: that two shot has now been expanded in to a full multi-chap fic called Strangers on the Phone so go check it out!
> 
> Anyway, this is the Divorced!Clexa one-shot that many of you asked for. It's over 8k words because I kind of got really in to it :D

"I don't think I can do this Anya," Lexa repeated for the tenth time that morning as she paced around her kitchen.

"You have to go," Anya spoke over the phone, relaying the fact that Lexa knew all to well. "You're Jackson's godmother, not to mention the fact that Octavia would actually kill you if you missed her son's wedding. And then there's the fact that explaining why you aren't in the family photos would be entirely awkward."

"I don't see why it would be awkward, it's a very straight forward explanation."

"Actually, it's not straight at all, it's quite gay," Anya sniggered as she played off the pun. Lexa ignored it as she continued to pace. "And honestl, I don't get what the big deal is. You raised three kids together!"

"No," Lexa spoke matter-of-factly, we raised the twins together for fourteen years. We've been divorced for more than half of Dylan's life, that doesn't exactly constitute us raising her together."

"Regardless," Anya interrupted. Lexa could hear the exasperation in her older sister's voice. "My point was that I don't understand how the fact that Clarke is going to be at the wedding is such a big deal. You have three children tohether, you see each other all the time."

"Three years," Lexa admitted. It was the first time she'd admitted the fact to her sister. "I haven't seen Clarke since the twins' graduation. Three years ago."

There was silence on the other end of the line, causing Lexa to pause mid-pace. She was so focused on the silence, that she didn't register the fact that the shower upstairs that was previously running, no longer was. "I'm sorry, what?" Anya finally spoke in shock. "How is it that you've been keeping this information from me? How does that even work? Dylan alternates between your houses every week, she's thirteen and can't exactly drive herself."

"Mondays is switch day," Lexa explained. Because they'd decided to put Dylan in private school following the divorce, it didn't matter that she and Clarke lived in different towns. "Dylan simply takes different school buses home each week. There's no need for us to ever see each other."

"That's bullshit. Jake and Willa might be in college, but surely you need to talk about Dylan, and there's no way phone calls cut it."

"Emails," Lexa dropped the next bomb. "We only communicate through email."

"You are actually ridiculous," Anya scoffed. "I thought you got lunch together twice a month to discuss the kids?"

"We did," Lexa confirmed as she left the kitchen and sat down on the couch in the living room, unaware of the set of ears listening in to her conversation at the top of the stairs. Lexa took a deep breath before admitting to the reason why she hadn't heard her ex-wife's voice or seen her in three years. "At the twins' graduation when she suggested that I sign up for a dating website and I told her I didn't want to. She pressed me on it, and I told her why."

"You're such an idiot. You and Clarke somehow managed to become friends after your divorce and you went and fucked it up."

"Yes Anya I'm aware!" Lexa ran a hand through her brown curls. "I told her that even though we were done, that there would never be anyone again because she was it for me. I made a fool of myself. There's a reason why most people don't stay friends with their ex-wives. It doesn't work. So now we email and that's it. And it's worked for us."

"I now better understand why you are so worked about this wedding," Anya relented.

"Yeah."

"You still love her, don't you?"

Lexa laughed out loud at the question before providing it the most honest answer she could. "I will never not love Clarke Griffin. I am incapable of not being in love with her. But me not loving her was never our problem. Some times love just isn't enough."

Anya made a gagging sound on the other end of the line and Lexa rolled her eyes. "You sound like a sappy rom-com. And now you're stalling even further. Don't you have a wedding to get ready for?"

Lexa groaned in response. "Yes. Fine. Bye An."

"Bye little sis. Let me know how it goes, and try not to fuck anything up even more."

"I'll try."

Lexa had just hung up her phone and was trying to gather the energy to get ready when a loud, high-pitched voice echoed through the house. "Mom! Can you come do my hair?"

Taking that as her cue, Lexa got off the couch and headed upstairs. "Dylan!" She reprimanded as soon as she entered her daughter's room, "What have I told you about yelling in the house? It's totally unnecessary."

"I wasn't sure if you were still on the phone with Aunt Anya or not," the thirteen-year-old shrugged.

Lexa's stomach dropped, could her daughter have heard the conversation she'd been having downstairs on the phone? The last thing she wanted her youngest to hear was her confession of love. She didn’t want the girl getting any wrong notions in her head.

"How did you know I was talking to Aunt Anya?” she asked, hoping to gauge the girl’s reaction.

“Because I told you she called and you told me you’d call her back while I was showering. Duh.” Dylan had gotten particularly sassy in the past year, Lexa chalked it up to her finally becoming a teenager.

Lexa nodded, trying to hide her relief, and took in the fact that her child was still wearing a robe and that her long brown hair was still sopping wet. “You know I can only do your braids once your hair is dry Dyl.”

“I know,” the girl nodded before lifting up the hair dryer in her hand, "Can you blow dry it for me?”

Lexa remembered the way she used to blow dry Willa and Dylan’s hair every night after they showered while Clarke took the dog for a walk. Up until the months leading up to the divorce they hadn't strayed from their nightly ritual. After dinner, Clarke and Lexa would clean up while the kids showered. Then, Lexa would blow dry hair while Clarke took the dog for a walk. And once the kids were in bed, the couple would take a relaxing bath together. After the divorce, Willa started high school and never asked Lexa to blow dry her hair, but Lexa had kept up the ritual with her younger daughter for the first few years until Dylan insisted she could do it herself.

“Of course,” Lexa smiled as she sat on the girl’s desk chair and gestured for Dylan to kneel in front of her. It took a long time for the girl’s mane to dry entirely, but Lexa enjoyed it. Even when the kids were little, Dylan's always took longer than Willa’s. Dylan had Lexa’s hair, thick, curly, and often unmanageable. By the time she finished drying it and putting delicate braids throughout it though, it was nearly time for them to leave for the church. “So have you decided what you're wearing yet?” Lexa asked as she looked at her watch. She still needed to do her own hair and make up and get changed as well.

After admiring her braids in the mirror Dylan opened the door to her closet. One of the perks of having divorced parents who had equal custody was that she had two full closets of clothing so that she would never have to be a suitcase-kid, trekking clothes between both her homes the way her older siblings had the first years after the divorce. She’d grown up with her moms divorced and hardly remembered the time before it. She was in first grade when they split.

“I was thinking of wearing my suit,” the girl admitted with a sheepish smile.

Lexa remembered how excited her daughter had been when she'd asked for the suit for her birthday several months earlier. She remembered the way the girl had reluctantly admitted to the fact that she had only asked Lexa and not Clarke for it because Lexa was the one who wore a suit to their wedding and she wasn’t sure if Clarke would approve of her wearing one.

“Then I guess we'll be matching then,” Lexa smiled at her daughter. “Now I better go get ready. I think your brother would murder me if I missed his debut as best man.” Even though Jackson was two years older than Jake, the two had grown up effectively as cousins and were best friends.

 

* * *

 

Clarke and Willa were one of the first to arrive at the church. Both women liked to remain on a schedule and hated being late. The two were more a like then they cared to admit, but it was obvious to anyone that knew them both, and not just because Willa was currently studying pre-med in hopes of becoming a doctor like her mother.

Even though they were early, the church started to fill up fairly quickly. Both Jackson and Tris came from large extended families, especially when you counted Octavia’s friends and their children as family members.

“Shouldn’t they have been here by now?” Willa asked her mother, finally voicing the concern that Clarke had been dwelling on for nearly an hour. “I mean, it’s not like Lexa lives very far away from here.”

Clarke was taken off-guard by her daughter’s use of her ex-wife’s first name. She’d heard Willa use it several times in the past few years, but it still shocked her each time. Despite the fact that her relationship with Lexa had been a failure, she’d never wanted their children to pick one parent over the other in the divorce. Unfortunately though, that was what had happened. Willa had blamed Lexa for the divorce and had convinced her twin to do the same. Luckily, Dylan had been young enough to not be able to form her own opinion despite her older sister trying to convince her to. Dylan had remained neutral throughout their seven years of divorce.

“Is there a reason why you’re calling your mom Lexa and not Mom?” Clarke asked, diverting the conversation away from the fact that her ex-wife and youngest child still hadn’t arrived. She didn’t want to think about seeing Lexa. She’d been trying not to think about it all day. She’d only seen her once in the past three years, and that had been on accident. She wasn’t even sure Lexa had realized they’d both accidentally gone to the same night of Dylan’s dance recital the year before.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Willa shrugged, “And don’t worry, it’s not like I call her that to her face, it’s just easier to say Lexa rather than to clarify which of my moms I’m talking about. And at school when people ask, it makes more sense to just say that Lexa is my mom’s ex-wife.”

Clarke abruptly turned in her seat to face her daughter. This was not the way she’d raised her daughter to act. In fact, if she really thought about it, Willa was acting more like a college version of Lexa than Clarke. “Lexa is your mother just as much as I am. And I better not hear you talking like that to your sister, do you understand?”

“Whatever,” the younger blonde crossed her arms across her chest and slouched in her seat. She then sat up a little straighter as she remembered something. “Why isn’t Finn here by the way.”

Clarke blushed as she realized that she hadn’t actually thought to invite her boyfriend to the wedding. They’d met at one of Dylan’s parent nights, he was also a divorced parent at the school. They had been seeing each other for the past couple officially for a few months, but Clarke didn’t think it was going to last. There was no real spark with him. “It seemed too soon,” she spoke, offering up an explanation. “Besides, I’m not really sure how much longer it’s going to last with him. There’s no real spark.”

“You should give it time,” Willa rebutted, “He’s a nice guy.”

Clarke knew that all of her children actually liked Finn a lot. He’d made an effort to make sure that Dylan and his daughter got along and spent time with them as well as the twins after they’d come home from college for the summer. He hadn’t even questioned why it was that Dylan spent every other week with Lexa while the twins only went over to their second mother’s house every other weekend. Finn was a nice guy, but Clarke always wanted more than that. She wanted a love that wasn’t just with someone who she got along with, but someone who challenged her and made life more exciting. She knew what it was like to have that kind of love though, and she knew it didn’t last. That it wasn’t enough.

When the music started to play, Clarke turned around just in time to see Lexa and Dylan sneaking in a side door and sliding in to the last pew on the groom’s side of the aisle. Her heart raced at the sight of them. Lexa looked like she’d barely aged in the three years since the last time they really saw each other. Meanwhile Clarke had begun to find her share of grey hairs. The first thing that she noticed though, was the fact that Lexa and Dylan were wearing coordinating suits. The sight of Lexa in a suit used to make her hornier than anything, but the sight of her ex-wife and daughter in the suits just made her heart ache. Dylan was like a smaller version of Lexa. She’d always known that of course, but it became more apparent actually seeing the two together.

“Of course she made Dylan wear a suit. Dylan has so many gorgeous dresses. I literally took her shopping last week and she got the most gorgeous blue…”

“Willa,” Clarke held a hand up, interrupting her older daughter. “Dylan looks great. I highly doubt Lexa forced her to wear that suit, Dylan doesn’t exactly do well with people telling her what to wear.”

Willa rolled her eyes, but as the music swelled she turned back around to watch the wedding procession. Clarke withdrew her camera as she started to take pictures. She smiled brighter at the sight of Lincoln and Octavia proudly walking down the aisle, ready to watch their son marry the love of his life and the entire wedding party, especially her son Jake who walked with Lincoln and Octavia’s daughter, Aurora, the maid-of-honor. She’d had an inkling for a while that Jake and Aurora had gotten past being raised almost as cousins and that they were secretly dating. And seeing the way they were so comfortable simply heightened her suspicions. She’d asked Willa about it earlier that week, but Jake’s twin had refused to comment on the matter.

The ceremony was beautiful and Jackson and Tris’ vows brought Clarke and Willa both to tears. Maybe it was because Lexa was only pews behind her, or simply because she was at a wedding, but Clarke couldn’t help but think about her own wedding. Despite how their relationship ended, Clarke only had fond memories of her wedding day and the majority of her marriage to Lexa. And even though Jackson and Tris’ vows were heartfelt, she still believed her and Lexa’s had been better. She just hoped that the newly married couple would keep their vows better than she and Lexa had.

After the ceremony, everyone gathered outside to wait for the shuttle that would take them the forty-five minutes to Polis Inn where the reception would be held and where the majority of the guests would be spending the night. Even though there would be photos taken at the Inn, the photographer insisted on getting photos of the wedding party in front of the chapel, so Clarke decided to take some of her own as well.

After the wedding party finished their photos, the shuttle still had not arrived. According to Lincoln it was only a few minutes delayed though.

“Mom! Willa!” exclaimed a cheerful Dylan as she came hustling over to her mother and sister, a dapper looking Jake behind her as well as a more reticent-looking Lexa in her trail.

“Hey Dyl!” Clarke greeted her younger daughter, “I love the suit!”

“Really?” Dylan asked, her eyes wide with appreciation. Being a young teen she craved approval, even if she didn’t want to admit that her mother’s approval mattered to her.

“Of course,” Clarke nodded, “And the best man is looking pretty nice himself.” The blonde brought her only son in to a hug.

“I was thinking maybe we can get a family picture?” Dylan asked sheepishly. “Of all of us.”

Clarke could never deny her daughter anything that made her feel more secure in their family unit, so she relented. “Of course,” she nodded.

“Hi Lexa,” she finally greeted her ex-wife with a soft smile. Any hatred that had come between them as a result of their divorce had passed before the divorce had even been finalized. Not that Clarke could ever hate Lexa anyway.

“You look nice Clarke,” Lexa smiled in return. Clarke ignored the way ancient butterflies began to waken in the pit of her stomach at the sight of the smile.

“So do you,” Clarke nodded honestly in return.

“So where do you guys want the photo?” Aurora asked, appearing from behind Jake. Clarke hadn’t even noticed her arrival, but she was holding up a professional-looking photo as she gestured to the church behind them.

“In front of the church maybe?” Clarke suggested, causing her family to nod in assent and walk towards the steps that led up to the building.

Clarke remembered the last family photo they had taken. It was at the twins’ high school graduation. Positioning themselves for that photo had been easy. The twins had stood in the middle with a parent on each side and a shorter Dylan in front of them. But now Dylan had grown and was even wearing heels and the twins weren’t the cause for the picture. The arrangement would have to be different.

For several awkward moments they tried to figure out the best way to position themselves before Dylan finally took charge. “Mom and Mama go next to each other on the second step, Willa and Jake go on either side of them and I’ll stand on the first step in the middle.”

Glad that someone had organized it, they all got in to position, but not before Willa could make a remark under her breath, “I don’t think Mama really appreciates standing next to Mom.” With the increase in the amount of times Clarke had heard Willa call Lexa by her name, there had also been a decrease in the amount of times Willa called Clarke ‘Mama’. Lately the only one who called her that was Dylan while Willa and Jake had started calling her simply ‘Mom’.

They smiled for the picture, but as soon as it was taken, she heard Willa say something under her breath again. Clarke couldn’t make out what Willa had said, but it was easy enough to figure out the general meaning behind it as it elicited a glare from Dylan. “Willa, apologize to your mom for being rude to her.”

“Why should I?” the twenty-one-year old demanded, acting more like a teenager than an adult.

“Because she’s your mother and you need to respect her,” Clarke explained simply.

“You mean like she respected you and the rest of our family by leaving you and completely rejecting us, leaving two high school freshmen and a six-year-old to pick up the pieces?” Willa’s voice had raised, bringing to argument the fight that they’d never had, not in the seven years since the divorce.

Clarke stood there in shock for several moments before her eyes darted to Lexa's. They always had when confronted with a difficult situation. But when they saw the pain that the green eyes had failed to hide Clarke knew that she had to repair the situation. It had been at Lexa's insistence that they didn't tell the children the cause of the divorce. She hadn't wanted the kids to treat Clarke any differently. It may have been Lexa who filed for divorce, but it was Clarke's fault. And it was because of Lexa's selflessness that Willa had blamed Lexa for the divorce, the divorce that hadn't been Lexa's fault at all. Clarke knew she had to fix that though.

"Stop blaming Lexa!" She exclaimed, her voice raised louder than she'd anticipated. "Lexa didn't leave us. She didn't break our family, I did. I cheated on her, and that's why we got divorced."

Clarke hadn't realized that Lincoln had just approached them to let them know that the shuttle had arrived and that many of their friends were standing close by. She had always assumed that Lexa had told their friends of her indiscretion, or at the very least that she’d told Lincoln, as he’d been her best friend since college. But the look on Octavia, Lincoln, Raven, Bellamy and Echo’s faces along with the faces of their children told her otherwise. They told her that Lexa hadn’t told anyone. It made her wonder if Lexa had told Anya, or if Lexa had dealt with the burden of knowledge by herself. All around them everyone instantly went silent. Everyone waited to see who it was who would break the silence.

In the end it was Dylan who broke it. And while it seemed like eons to Clarke before she spoke, it was only several prolonged moments of silence. “Uncle Lincoln, did you say that the shuttle was here?” Clarke would have to remember to thank her younger daughter later, for bringing normalcy to the conversation. She wondered how it was that the young teen had managed to remain unfeathered by the bombshell that Clarke had just dropped.

“Uh, yeah it is,” the father of the groom confirmed. This statement seemed to spur the bystanders in to motion as they all set about making their way to the shuttle bus.

It seemed like none of the Griffin-Woods family knew how to respond by the reveal that was seven years in the making. They all stood there silently, waiting for someone else to bring up the elephant in the room until they realized that they too needed to board the shuttle. The children boarded first and took three seats together in the back of the bus, leaving only two other seats available. Two seats next to each other which Clarke and Lexa reluctantly took.

When the shuttle set in to motion, the bus started to titter with conversation, everyone talking to their seat mates. After several minutes of incredibly awkward silence, Lexa finally broke it. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she spoke. “We decided that we weren’t going to tell them.”

“I was tired of Willa acting like a bitch to you.”

“She’s not that bad, and it’s not even like you ever see the way she acts to me anyway.” Even though it had been three years since Clarke had heard Lexa’s voice, she could still read her like an open book and she knew that she was trying to hide pain behind snark.

“Maybe not,” Clarke relented, knowing that she was in the wrong, “But I do know the way she talks about you and it’s not right. We didn’t raise her to act that way.”

“If she had to find out, I would have preferred it to have been in a more controlled environment,” Lexa explained. Clarke knew by the way Lexa was speaking, in perfect, controlled sentences, that she was trying to gain control over not just the conversation, but the situation as a whole.

“Clearly things don’t always go as planned,” Clarke returned, starting to feel annoyed. Obviously she wasn’t happy with the situation either.

“I told Dylan two years ago.” Lexa’s words hit Clarke like a punch in the stomach. “I never told anyone, not even Anya, but two years ago Dylan was upset to find out that Caris, you know her best friend? Well she was really upset that Caris’ parents were splitting up, especially since her Dad cheated on her Mom. She couldn’t understand why it had happened. And hell our daughter really catches on quick to things, because she must have figured out from my reaction that it was a sore subject.”

“So what happened?” Clarke asked.

“She straight out asked if that’s why we’d gotten divorced. And I couldn’t lie to her, so I told her the truth.”

“Why did you tell me?” For two years her younger daughter had known about her infidelity, but hadn’t treated her any differently.

Clarke watched as Lexa took a deep breath before answering her question. “She promised me not to tell you that she knew. I explained to her that I didn’t hate you and that I’d gotten past it and that even if it ruined our marriage, that it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back and that I still respected your role in the lives of our children. I asked her not to treat you any differently and she promised she wouldn’t. She said that if I of all people could forgive you, that she could too.”

“She’s something special our Dylan,” Clarke sighed. She dwelled for a moment on the fact that Lexa had admitted to forgiving her. Even though she knew it to be the case based on interactions she’d had with her ex-wife, she’d never actually heard her say the words before.

“All three of them are,” Lexa added, to which Clarke nodded.

Not knowing what to say next, the exes sat in silence the entire remaining ride to the reception. Meanwhile, their children sat in the back of the bus, discussing the the new-found knowledge and what it meant to them going forward, discussing things that the children of all divorced parents did at some point.

 

* * *

 

Not knowing how many of Lincoln and Octavia’s college friends had been invited to the wedding, Lexa had been concerned about the seating arrangements. While it was a given that she would have to interact with Clarke, she’d really wanted to avoid sitting at the same table as her at the reception. Luckily though, Jackson and Tris had had the forethought to separate them and while Clarke was seated with Raven, Wick, Bellamy, Echo, Jasper and Maya, Lexa was seated at a table with Harper, Harper’s husband, Monroe, Murphy, Monty and Miller. Both she and Clarke were the only single ones at their respective tables, but Lexa did find it to be a relief that they weren’t at the same table.

After the toasts were made and everyone got through their dinners, Lexa falling in to an easy conversation with Monty and Miller about their son’s desire to go to college for tennis, Lexa felt a soft had on her shoulder. She put down her cocktail and turned around to find her son there.

“Hey Jake,” she smiled. “Your best man toast was great.” It was. He’d managed to both embarrass Jackson and bring up some of the best memories he had of him. Many of them involving them going on family vacations together.

It had surprised Lexa that references to old family vacations actually made her smile and gave her a familiar feeling in her heart that wasn't unpleasant at all.

"Thanks Mom," Jake smiled genuinely in response. While Lexa's relationship with Jake wasn't as bad as her's with Willa, it had certainly suffered as a result of the divorce. When Jake had been growing up, Lexa had been his baseball coach and had been the one he turned to when he needed help with anything. In the years following the divorce though, he'd sort of gone into a limbo, failing to have a close relationship with either of his mothers.

"Rora and I were going to go do Jager bombs, you want to join?" He offered an olive branch.

Grateful for the offer, Lexa nodded and said goodbye to her college friends, following her son to the bar where the sister of the groom was waiting for them.

"So you and Rora, huh?" Lexa grinned, not oblivious to what was in front of her.

"Yeah," he shrugged sheepishly, admitting to his relationship to one of his parents for the first time.

"How long?" Lexa asked.

"Almost a year." The length of his secret relationship surprised Lexa, but she tried not to let that show on her face.

"Don't fuck it up," she laughed, knowing that her son was like her in his tendency to avoid acting emotional when he didn't have to. Willa was the same, though his twin would never admit to being similar to Lexa at all.

"I won't," he conceded as they made it to the bar.

Lexa greeted Aurora with a hug, telling her how much she looked like her mother. She had many of Octavia's features, but in personality she was much more like Lincoln, a stoic teddy bear.

They took their shots, but before they had a chance to ask for another, they were joined by the girl who looked painfully like Clarke.

"Can I talk to you for a minute Mom?" Willa asked, looking like a puppy who'd just been caught with her head in the toilet.

"Of course," Lexa excused herself from her son and his girlfriend, following Willa to the other side of the bar where they took seats beside each other.

"I'm sorry," the blonde spoke. "I've pretty much been a bitch you for seven years straight because I thought you left Mama for no reason."

"It's not entirely your fault," Lexa offered, grabbing her daughter's hand and squeezing it reassuringly. "Mama wanted to tell you guys so you could learn from her mistakes, but I didn't want you to treat her any differently. You three are the most important people in the world to us and we didn't want you to hurt any more than our divorce was going to hurt you in the first place."

"How long was she cheating on you for?" Willa asked. Now that she knew the root of the divorce, she needed to know the whole story and Lexa wasn't in a position to deny her that knowledge. "I can't believe she had sex with someone else while you were married. You always seemed so happy until literally the month before you told us you were getting divorced."

"She didn't have sex with anyone else," Lexa needed to clear the air. "There was another doctor in the same department as her, it doesn't matter his name. She didn't realize she was emotionally cheating until one night they were out for drinks and he called it a date. She went back to his apartment with him and they kissed, but she stopped it before it went any further. She told me about it that very night when she came home."

"But why?" Willa was practically pleading at this point.

"I don't think even she knows. It was hard though at that time. You and Jake were starting high school at the same time as Dylan was starting elementary school. I was in my first term as mayor and she had just gotten new responsibilities as an attending surgeon. We were both stressed and hardly had time for one another. Sometimes things just happen and they're shitty, but you can't change the past."

"You've forgiven her, haven't you?" Willa asked, shocked, "You even stayed friends with her. For the first four years anyway."

"I stopped hating her the moment I realized how much worse it was to hate someone who would always hold your heart," Lexa blamed the overly emotional response on the mix of cocktails and the Jager bomb.

"Something happened at my graduation, didn't it? And that's why you haven't seen each other in three years." Willa was finally putting the pieces together in her head. "I know you haven't seen each other since then. I know I've been away at school, but Dylan told me."

Lexa was currently in the longest conversation that wasn't an argument with her older for the first time in seven years and that wasn't something small. If she wanted to repair her relationship with the girl, then she needed to tell her the truth. So for the second time that day, she explained what happened that day. "She suggested I sign up for a dating website. I was somewhat drunk at the time and told her that I would never be able to have a relationship with anyone. She would always be it for me. I never asked for my heart back from her. She still has it and she always will."

"Oh shit," Willa muttered, "I could see how that would ruin your friendship."

"You sound like Aunt Anya."

"She has a boyfriend you know," Willa offered. "His name is Finn. He's nice, not a bad guy, but she doesn't love him."

Lexa's heart sunk at her daughter's words. It's not like she hadn't thought about Clarke dating again, but being told that she really was fractured the heart she had promised to keep only for her children. "Well I wish her luck then," Lexa was aware of the dejection in her voice, but she couldn't care enough to hide it.

"Okay, that sounds like we need more to drink," Willa stood up with a look of determination in her eyes and gestured for her mother to do the same. After standing Willa pulled Lexa in to a hug, one they stayed in for several long moments before the younger girl pulled Lexa back to her brother and his girlfriend.

They took shots together while they watched Dylan dancing with the newly married couple. Lexa remembered when she and Clarke first decided to get pregnant for the second time. They knew there would be a large age gap between the youngest and the twins and hoped that the three would still be able to have a good relationship. The age gap was what they were more worried about, not the fact that the twins were biologically Clarke's and that the youngest would be biologically Lexa's. They'd left their worries behind though when they realized that Dylan would be turning thirteen at the same time the twins would be able to legally drink, that they would be far apart in age that they would likely not get in to as many arguments. Clarke had joked that they'd be drinking with the twins around the same time Dylan would start having her first crushes. As she stood at the bar with Willa, Jake and Aurora, Lexa couldn't help but feel that Clarke was missing out on exactly the things they'd spoken about wanting to enjoy together.

 

* * *

 

From across the room, Clarke watched has Lexa drank and laughed with their twins and Aurora. She felt a pang of jealousy, but also a slight feeling of content. After everything that had happened, Lexa deserved the opportunity to reconnect with their older children. It made her miss all the time they had spent together as a family. She’d been missing that time more and more every time the twins came home from college. When they were home with Dylan, she knew that she was supposed to see that as they completed family, but without Lexa, nothing would ever be complete.

If only she’d realized that sooner. If she’d realized that sooner, then maybe she wouldn’t have spent the past three years communicating with Lexa only occasionally via email. Maybe they could have kept some semblance of a family structure. Instead, she’d freaked out when Lexa had effectively told her that she would always love her. She’d thought it wasn’t fair. Lexa shouldn’t have been the one suffering just because she’d fucked up.

It wasn’t until she saw Lexa drinking and bonding with the twins that she realized that Lexa wasn’t the only one who’d never asked for her heart back. And that was why she couldn’t love Finn. She couldn’t love Finn because she’d given her heart away the moment she met Lexa the first day of their shared public speaking class that January day of their freshman year of college. She’d given her heart away and had never thought to ask for it back.

Clarke continued to stare at her ex and her older children, not noticing their youngest recognizing the way Clarke was looking at Lexa. She didn’t know that Dylan had overheard Lexa and Anya on the phone. She had no way of knowing that Dylan had realized that Clarke still loved Lexa before Clarke even realized it herself. And she certainly didn’t notice Dylan excusing herself from the bride and groom to request a song from the DJ. Because if she had, then maybe she wouldn’t have been so surprised to hear the first few beats of Rachel Platten’s song, “Fight Song”.

The song had become popular the year she and Lexa had gotten married and it was the song to which they’d choreographed their first dance. It was an unconventional dance, highly choreographed with lot’s of fun moves. And Clarke still remembered every move.

Across the room, she made eye contact with Lexa, ignoring the looks they were both getting from those who had attended their wedding. She ignored the way Dylan stopped Octavia from approaching the DJ to ask him to change the song.

Lexa never forgot anything and Clarke knew that. She knew that Lexa remembered every move just as well as she did. They didn’t have to say anything to know that for three minutes, they would be going back twenty-five years to their wedding. They met in the middle of the dance floor just as the chorus started for the first time.

Three years without talking, and seven years since their divorce and twenty-five years since the last time they danced to the song all disappeared as their bodies moved in sync. Clarke felt the smile on her face widening to match Lexa’s as their bodies remembered the way they never had to work to find sync with one another. She had no eyes for the crowd that had circled around them to watch them spin one another and duck under arms. She had eyes only for the green-eyed girl she’d fallen in love with all those years ago.

The three minute song ended much too quickly for Clarke’s liking. It seemed like only a second after she first grabbed Lexa’s hand to spin over her shoulders, they were reaching the last sequence of choreography.

_“Cause I’ve still got a lotta fight left in me,”_

Lexa spun out of the turn and Clarke kissed her hand, just as tenderly as she had the night of their wedding.

_“No I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me.”_

Clarke spun in to Lexa, just as the choreography dictated. And the last beat of the song rang out. It was all exactly how it had been twenty-five years previously, but without the dip and kiss Lexa had improvised that night.

The circle that had formed around them burst out in to cheers, Dylan grinning proudly at her accomplishment. It was at the sound of the cheers though that Clarke knew exactly what would happen next. It was too much, it was all too much. Even before Lexa pulled away from her, she knew it was going to happen. Lexa fled away from her through a gap in the circle, surprising everyone except her ex-wife.

At Lexa’s escape, the crowd quickly dispersed and Clarke’s children quickly approached her. “Stay here,” Clarke insisted, knowing that Lexa would not take kindly to their entire family following her out of the reception hall. The three nodded, but exchanged looks of confusion as Clarke ran out in search of her ex-wife.

“Lexa!” Clarke called out as she ran out in to the garden lit only by fairy lights. When Lexa didn’t turn around, Clarke swore under her breath, shedding her heels the were only getting caught in the soft grass. “Lexa, stop!”

It wasn’t until they reached the far end of the garden, when there was a no where else to go, that Lexa finally stopped and turned around. Her eyes were watery and reflected the fairy lights around her, and if they were in a situation, maybe at a different time, Clarke would tell her how beautiful she looked.

“Lexi, please talk to me,” Clarke pleaded.

Clarke’s use of her nickname seemed to spark something in Lexa, because suddenly she wasn’t sad, she was angry. Clarke couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Lexa angry like that. Even after she’d told her about cheating on her, Lexa had just been sad. Even during the divorce proceedings, Lexa had never once raised her voice. It was like she’d been broken. She’d never acted angry towards her. Until now.

“Why?” Lexa demanded. Clarke opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the bitter brunette. “No, I’m talking. Why? Why did you do it? I told myself I’d never ask, because really I didn’t want to know, but now I do. We were so happy, even when things were hard. I loved you so much, hell I’m not sure how, but I still do. Back in there dancing with you just now made me realize how easy it was supposed to be. We were the couple everyone compared themselves to. We were supposed to drink together with the twins and tease Dylan about her crushes together. We promised to be forever. Why? Why Clarke? What did I do that made you want to throw it all away? What happened to us?”

Even through her anger, Lexa’s eyes spilled over with the tears that had been welling in her eyes. She knew that Lexa was waiting for her response, but Clarke didn’t even know the answer to half her questions. She didn’t know why she cheated with the other attending. All she knew was that she and Lexa had been more focused on their children at the time and hadn’t spent enough time together. “I was lonely,” was the only answer she could muster.

“You were lonely?” Lexa scoffed, her anger rising back within her. “You fucked it up all because you were lonely? Well guess what? I’ve been lonely for seven years.”

Lexa’s statement broke Clarke’s heart even more than the divorce itself had. It was proof that she had destroyed the person she’d cared most for for the longer amount of time. But if she thought that was hard to hear, Lexa’s next statement broke her even further.

“Why wasn’t I enough?” The brunette’s voice cracked and the anger fell away as tears fell down her face.

Clarke didn’t even realize she was crying until Lexa’s form became blurry in front of her.

“I’m so sorry,” Clarke croaked. “You were always enough, I was just stupid and let all the stress we were both facing get ahold of me. You’ll always be enough. I just…” she trailed off. She wiped her eyes and saw that Lexa was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to bring up the conversation that had led to their three years without seeing each other. “You told me at the twins graduation that I still had your heart and that scared me because I didn’t want to hold on to something so precious, knowing what I’d done to it. And I’ve asked myself many times over the years why we’d never done this, really fought and yelled. I asked myself why it was that you never asked for your heart back. But I never asked for mine back either. I’ve tried dating, but I can’t bring it in myself to fall in love again, because I never really fell out of love in the first place.”

Clarke watched as a dawning of understanding fell across her ex-wife’s face.

“What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry that I broke our family. I’m sorry that I left you to be lonely. And I’m sorry that I let Willa and Jake hate you for seven years. I’m sorry I didn’t pressure you to let me tell them the truth. I’m sorry that you still trust me to hold your heart. And above all, I’m sorry that I still love you, because I don’t deserve it, and you deserve the world.”

For once, Clarke didn’t know how Lexa would react, but if she had to pick a reaction, it wouldn’t have been the one that Lexa gave her. The brunette closed the distance between them, backing Clarke up against the fence. For a brief moment, Clarke registered the way Lexa’s eyes glanced down at her lips. Then they were on hers.

The kiss was natural, easy and it was as if they hadn’t spent seven years without kissing. Their bodies had always been so in sync. They’d never had to worry about their physical attractions. Life had been their problem, not each other. But they had never mixed a kiss with the salt of tears before. And that was the only thing that set it apart from others in their past. Clarke knew that it was a kiss that came in the heat of the moment, that it couldn’t have meant anything, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. She couldn’t pull away, not when Lexa swiped her tongue across Clarke’s lower lip, asking for entrance. Not when kissing Lexa felt like coming home after wandering around in the abyss for seven years.

When they finally pulled apart minutes later, both in need of air, they rested their foreheads together. They stayed like that for several long moments as they regained their breath, bodies flush against each other, arms wrapped around one another.

“I should have fought for you,” Clarke broke the silence. “I never even tried to save us.”

“I didn’t either,” Lexa relented, pulling away so that while they were still holding on to each other, they could now see each other’s faces.

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“I’ll always love you,” Clarke repeated her sentiment from earlier. “I am just as in love with you now as I was on our wedding night.”

“I still love you as well,” Lexa nodded in agreement. “But is that enough? Can loving someone really be enough?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke sighed. It hadn’t been enough in their past, who was to say that it would be enough now.

“Dylan thinks there’s still a chance we’ll get back together,” Lexa admitted, “She thinks she’s subtle, but she’s not. She was the one who requested our song. Willa knows we both still love each other. And Jake is dating Aurora and we’ve been a horrible example for what a healthy relationship looks like.”

“What are you trying to say?” Clarke, trying to latch on to her ex-wife’s train of thought. She seemed to be all over the place and Clarke didn’t know what it was that Lexa was trying to tell her.

“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know. I don’t know either if love is enough, not when we have three kids who are more important than our relationship. They need to come first. I don’t want to give Dylan false hope, or risk ruining either of our relationships with Willa, or being an even worse example to Jake. And I…”

Clarke took a leap of faith and quieted Lexa by pressing her lips against hers. She immediately felt the tension fall from the other woman’s shoulders. “You’re thinking too hard,” Clarke sighed after pulling away from the kiss. “We can do this slowly, or not at all. It’s up to you. If we decide to try being us again, we can keep it private for as long as we think is necessary. Whatever you want to do Lexa, I’ll do it. I can’t lose you again, and even if that means I can only have you as a friend, I can live with that.”

Lexa looked hard at the blonde before pulling her close again, in to a strong hug. “Okay,” she spoke in to the woman’s neck. “I’m ready to try. I want to fight for us.”

“I’m glad we chose Fight Song as our song,” Clarke smiled, placing a kiss against the brunette’s neck.

“Me too,” Lexa agreed.

“We should probably head back inside,” Clarke pulled out of the hug and gestured to the inn behind them. She grabbed Lexa’s hand and intertwined their fingers. “They’re probably about to cut the cake and I heard it has coconut icing on it.”

“That’s my favorite.”

“I know,” Clarke grinned as she pulled her girlfriend back inside. There were many things she knew about Lexa, her favorite type of icing was - so to speak - simply the icing on the cake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk clexa and fic requests with me and be my friend: madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


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